Whiskey Rebellion (Romantic Mystery/Comedy) Book 1 (Addison Holmes Mysteries) (3 page)

“Keep going,” he said.

I looked for the eye crinkles or a slight quirk of the mouth, but I couldn’t see anything in his expression other than cool disinterest. “There’s not much more to tell. I saw my principal in the audience, got fired and fell over him in the parking lot, in that order.”

Detective Dempsey took out his notebook and started writing. “You said earlier that your principal was getting a lap dance. Did you know the woman?”

“No, but I didn’t get to meet all the girls when Mr. Dupres hired me. I literally got hired and was handed a costume. I’ve only been here a couple of hours.”

“Would you recognize her if you saw her again?”

“Maybe. She had a lot of blonde hair, some of it may have even been hers, a dog collar and her attributes were um…,” I cupped my hands out in front of my chest. “Fake. That’s pretty much all I got.”

“What about other customers? Was it crowded? Was there anyone else in the audience you recognized?”

“It wasn’t exactly standing room only. The tables down front were full, but I didn’t recognize anyone. There was a couple making out in one of the corner booths that I noticed because a bouncer had to intervene before they had the chance to give their own public show. I couldn’t see the man’s face because it was hidden in shadow and all I could see of the woman was a blonde ponytail bobbing up and down. The other tables were pretty empty other than a few pathetic looking men scattered around. It was hard to see the back of the room from the stage because of the lights.”

“Did you see anyone else in the parking lot?”

“No, but I wasn’t really paying attention. I was looking for my keys. That’s why I tripped over Mr. Butler.”

A sob caught in my throat and I looked down at the table. I wanted to go home, and if Detective Dempsey had given me anything that had remotely resembled sympathy I would have broken down on the spot, but he kept his voice at the same level, unexpressive, and asked me the same questions over and over again. I was willing to bet when it came to playing good cop/bad cop, Detective Dempsey was always the bad cop.

I had no idea why I found the thought exciting.

“We’re going to need you to make a formal statement down at the station. It will take a little time to talk to everyone around here, so tomorrow or Monday at the latest will be fine.”

“But aren’t I a suspect? Aren’t you supposed to tell me not to leave town?”

“I think you watch too much television, Ms. Holmes. It should be pretty easy to get your whereabouts from the security cameras on the inside of the building.”

“Hmm,” I said. I hadn’t thought about that, but I wasn’t exactly at my best at the moment. I looked at him and pleaded with my eyes. “No one can know about this, Detective. I made a bad decision, but I have a lot to lose.”

“I’ll talk to Mr. Dupres myself and make sure he doesn’t give your name to the press, and there’s no reason for me to include your employment here in the report, only that you found the body.”

“Thank you,” I said, and truly meant it.

“Are you good at taking advice, Ms. Holmes?”

“Not especially, Detective Dempsey.”

His lips quirked a little. “I’m going to give you some anyway. You look like a nice kid from a nice family. Go back to your teaching job and stay away from places like this. It doesn’t suit you.”

I knew everything he said was true, but that didn’t mean I particularly liked hearing it. It was like rubbing salt in an already opened wound, and I didn’t need some cop coming along to tell me that I’d done something stupid.

“I’m thirty years old, Detective Dempsey. I stopped being a kid a long time ago, and sometimes decisions have to be made that aren’t particularly pleasant, whether people like you approve of those decisions or not. Now if you’re finished I’m going home.”

I scooted out of the booth and grabbed my bag, prepared to make a grand exit when I felt his hand under my elbow.

“Let me have a patrol car drive you home, Ms. Holmes. I’d hate to have to arrest you for drunk driving.”

I could see the laughter in his eyes, even though his mouth was in a serious line. I would have jerked my arm out of his grasp, but I was afraid I’d fall over.

Men like Nick Dempse
y are extremely irritating to independent women like me. They like to be in charge and they always think they’re right about everything.

The depressing thing is they almost always are.

The drive back to Whiskey Bayou was somber to say the least, but at least the officer taking me home didn’t make me ride in the back of the squad car. That would have fueled the gossip flames of the few remaining tenants that were still in my apartment complex.

I checked behind me to make sure the officer in my car was driving responsibly, and when I was satisfied he was, I turned back around and tried
to find a comfortable position on the torn vinyl seat of the Crown Victoria.

I noticed the
Now Leaving Savannah
sign and knew I’d be back home within minutes. Whiskey Bayou is a nice place to live. It’s a small town of about three thousand people surrounded by swamps and slimy creatures that bite. It’s an acquired taste, but picturesque in the daylight. And since it takes less than ten minutes to drive north to Savannah we’re not completely cut off from civilization. It just sometimes feels that way.

We turned right on Main Street, just past the two-storied, red-bricked
crumbling buildings and the giant sign that said
Welcome to Whiskey Bayou—The First Drink’s on Us
. An old depot that housed a train car graveyard sat on the left and a small diner, grocery store and park were on the right.

The
Whiskey Bayou residential area was constructed around the Walker Whiskey Distillery, which was built sometime in the 1800’s. When I was in college, I found out the Walkers were distant cousins of the Holmes, so I did my best to learn everything I could about whiskey just in case I was the last remaining relative someday and had a chance to inherit. Mostly everything I learned about whiskey was that it gave me a terrible headache and made my mouth dry.

The roads around the distillery looked like something a drunken council member would plan out, with crooked streets, some of which dead-ended for no apparent reason, and roundabouts that seemed to have no exit once you were on them. I remember once when I was a child, my mom going around in circles for what seemed like hours until my sister, Phoebe, finally threw up all over the back seat.

The officer who was driving me home seemed to be in the same predicament, and we went round and round until my eyes crossed and my stomach lurched. He finally flipped on his lights and broke several traffic laws once he saw the tinge of green my face had turned.

My apartment complex was just south of the residential area of “downtown” Whiskey Bayou. It
was built on swampland, which was only part of its many problems.

The building wa
s a square of four stories made of crumbling orange brick, single-paned windows—most of which were cracked—and stairs that divided the building into two halves. The parking lot was no better than rubble and sad looking shrubs lined the cracked sidewalk. The inside wasn’t a huge upgrade, but the rent was cheap.

“Geez, lady. You live here?” the cop asked.

“Home sweet home,” I said as I got out of the car. “Just park my car as far away from the building as you can. I wouldn’t want it to get damaged if the building collapsed in the middle of the night.”

“Right,” he said, not sure if I was joking.

I was. Kind of.

“Thanks for the lift,” I said and turned towards the building. Mr. and Mrs. Nowicki were both peeping out their window on the first floor, so I gave them a wave and headed up the stairs.

I was on the fourth floor. I hated being on the fourth floor. The plus side was that I was in damned good shape from hauling groceries, textbooks and whatever else I could carry from Pottery Barn up four flights of stairs. The bad news was that things like rain and tree limbs came through my ceiling first.

I noticed the yellow slip of paper taped to my peeling front door as I stuck my key into the lock. It was another eviction notice, warning me that I had to be out by the
deadline under penalty of law.

No problem.

I’d think of something.

I tore the note off, pushed open the door with my total body weight because the humidity caused the wood to swell, and made my way to the bedroom where I fell face first on the bed.

I couldn’t take much more in a day. I’d stripped, found a dead body, committed assault, gotten drunk, ogled a hot detective, despised the same hot detective, been escorted home in a police car and gotten another eviction notice. And it wasn’t even dinnertime.

I was asleep before I could tell myself that things could only get better.

Sunday

I’d
been taking a little hiatus from church for the past six months, so when Sunday morning rolled in with a crash of thunder and the plop of water as it hit the random buckets I had placed around the apartment, it seemed like the perfect excuse to miss one more Sunday service. I snuggled back under the covers and dozed until noon. Besides, my mother would be there, so she was representing me by default.

My reasons for steering clear of the First United Methodist Church in Whiskey Bayou had nothing to do with God,
the new banjo player they hired to accompany the choir or the fact that Reverend Peters frequently took too many sips of the communion wine.

It had to do with the fact that my wedding took place there six months ago.

It was a beautiful Christmas wedding. The church was decorated in yards of tulle and red roses, the cake was five tiers of confectioner’s heaven and seven bridesmaids were decked out in ruby satin. My dress had cost a fortune and was decorated with thousands of tiny seed pearls and a fifteen-foot train. The wedding was perfect.

The only thing missing was my fiancé.

While I’d been waiting to walk down the aisle, my fiancé Greg had been boffing Veronica Wade, the home economics teacher from my school, in the back of the limo that was waiting out front.

My ex-brother-in-law was the one who’d caught them in the act, and Derek “the Dweeb” Pfeiffer has never been one to handle situations delicately—like when he left my sister so he could find himself and inspire people through his rock. And let me tell you, Bon Jovi he is not. Of course, my sister should have known better than to marry so
meone who would give her the name of Phoebe Pfeiffer.

Derek didn’t think about keeping the news of Greg’s infidelity in the family and handling the matter quietly. He went directly to the videographer so the whole thing would be caught on
film and made an announcement to the attendees from the vestibule.

Greg and Veronica raced off in our limo and used our honeymoon tickets to frolic in the Bahamas for two weeks, while I faced a crowd of two hundred
. I didn’t get married that day, but the non-wedding got a hell of a write-up in the Whiskey Bayou Gazette, and I still have wedding cake in my freezer, which is always a plus.

A glance at the clock showed me I’d sufficiently slept in long enough to miss church.
I rolled out of bed, suddenly wide awake, and threw on a robe. I weaved my way around buckets filled with water on my way to the kitchen, and went through the routine of making coffee, ignoring the red flashing light on my answering machine while I waited for the coffee to percolate.

“Come on, come on.” I shifted back and forth on my feet impatiently. I couldn’t take it any longer, so I poured half a cup and drank it down quickly,
sighing as the cobwebs cleared from my mind.

I
refilled my cup, opened the refrigerator door and stood there a few minutes, wondering what I could do with one egg, a slimy head of lettuce, two bottles of ketchup and a six-pack of Corona. I closed the door with a sigh and made a note to stop by the grocery store.

T
he red light from the answering machine was making my eye twitch, so I forgot about eating and went to play my messages.

I hit the play button and fell back into an overstuffed chair to await the inevitable.

“Addison? Are you home? This is your mother.”

She always says that
, like I’m not going to recognize her voice.

“Why did a policeman bring you home? You’re not in trouble are you? Make sure you let me know if you need bail. I was thinking about buying a new washer a
nd dryer. Why aren’t you ever home?”

Click.

I did some deep breathing and relaxed further into the chair while I waited for the next message.

Beep.

“Addison? It’s your mother again. I wanted to remind you about services this morning.”

There was a small stretch of silence after this announcement and the disapproval came through the recording loud and clear.

Click.